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Friday, June 8, 2012

Obama Betrays 2008 Voters: Backroom Deal with Drug Companies

While campaigning for the U.S. presidency in 2008, Barak Obama decried the greedy Republican lawmakers acting at the behest of the drug companies to keep drug prices artificially high. A year later, those same drug companies wanted Obama to oppose a Democratic proposal that was intended to bring down the prices of medicine. Beyond betraying those voters who voted for him based on his campaign rhetoric on drug prices, Obama belied the trust that is necessary for a viable republic to function democratically.

“On June 3,
2009,” according to the New York Times, “one of the lobbyists e-mailed
Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s top health care adviser. Ms. DeParle sent a
message back reassuring the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she
wrote, she and other top officials had ‘made decision, based on how
constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on the bill.’ Just
like that, Mr. Obama’s staff abandoned his support for the reimportation of
prescription medicines at lower prices and with it solidified a growing compact
with an industry he had vilified on the campaign trail the year before.”

As per the quid pro quo, the industry sponsored its
own advertising campaign in favor of Obama’s health-insurance proposal. It was
not just the guys’ constructiveness that had convinced Obama’s staff to “make
the deal.” To be sure, the staff could have been supposing that the subsidies enabling
middle-income Americans to afford health insurance and the expansion of
Medicaid to cover 30 million uninsured Americans would relieve people from
having to pay high prices for medicine (though everyone, even if only as payers
of higher taxes, would be paying the price in the form of higher insurance
premiums). However, there would be no guarantee that the government would pick
up the tab when needed. Furthermore, the higher prices could widen government
deficits.

Beyond
health-care and budget policy, moreover, is the contradiction between Obama’s
campaign speeches and his staff’s decision to oppose the bill. The implication
is that Obama went back on his word, essentially betraying anyone who voted for
him because he promised to support
lower drug prices. Beyond Obama’s public credibility lies the mechanism of
democracy wherein voters trust that a
candidate’s campaign bears some relation to the candidate’s governance.
Otherwise, the “will of the people” breaks down and mistrust sets in on a
societal basis. In other words, when representatives say one thing on the trail
and quietly do the opposite behind their desks, democracy itself suffers.

In the wake of
the financial crisis of 2008, it was said that trust is vital to the financial
system. The same can be said of a viable republic. The question, therefore, is
how candidates can be held accountable for the assumed congruence when so much
of governance is done behind closed doors. In an electoral system where not
voting for one candidate benefits the candidate even further from the voter’s
preferences, it can be difficult indeed to hold an office-holder accountable at
the ballot box.